Chairperson, I would like to express my gratitude to all those who participated in this debate. It is quite clear that a tremendous amount of preparation has gone into this debate, and I really enjoyed listening to everybody. I think that there was quite a lot for all of us to learn. I have taken note very carefully of the comments that everybody has made. May I assure you, Chairperson, that we will sift through the large number of suggestions that have been made in the debate here and all of them will receive our serious attention.
As I do not want to keep members from their lunch I will not respond to every detail of what many of the speakers have said. However, because of the time I should perhaps just then say to the Chairperson that we have received very good co-operation generally from the select committee under the leadership of Rev Moatshe. I would like to use this opportunity to express my appreciation for the manner in which we have worked together, and for the support that he has given both the Ministry and the department. I hope that we will continue along these lines for the rest of the year. [Applause.]
I want to use this opportunity to express my gratitude for and give my congratulations to the Northern Cape province, particularly the people of Douglas, on having taken their own initiative to stop the use of plastic bags in their town. That is an initiative that they have taken on their own. Nobody has given them the funding to do it. They did not ask anybody for permission to do it. The community, on their own, decided to do this, and I think it sets a wonderful example for the rest of South Africa. [Applause.] I hope that we will be able to use that as a way of challenging towns and cities and the rest of the country to follow the same example. The only final point then which I would like to make is that a number of people have spoken about the need for us to mainstream the environment and environmental issues in this country. Members will know that much of what we do, much of the philosophy and the direction that we follow on environmental questions flow out of Agenda 21, which really is the product of the Earth Summit which was held in Rio in 1992. It was only after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio that a range of international protocols were entered into. Members will know, for example, that recently negotiations around a biosafety protocol, which regulates GMOs and other sorts of things, were concluded successfully. The Rio Earth Summit really produced what was a comprehensive agenda for the global community to follow on environmental questions, such as CSD questions related to climate change and global warming, matters related to local governance - all of those things.
The next earth summit, referred to loosely as ``Rio plus 10'', takes place in 2002, which is 10 years from the Rio summit, and is convened by the United Nations itself, as members know. The United Nations General Assembly will take a decision pretty soon on where that earth summit is to be held. I thought we should use this opportunity to inform Parliament that Cabinet has decided that South Africa will make itself available to host ``Rio plus 10'', in other words, the next earth summit. [Applause.]
We are reasonably confident that we will be chosen as the venue for a whole range of reasons, which I am not going to go into here. Many countries around the world have indicated that in their view we would be the ideal host for the earth summit.
The magnitude and significance of that summit are difficult to actually go into in a few minutes. However, one can expect that it will be attended by scores of heads of state, that it will be attended by literally tens of thousands of delegates from around the world, and that there will be a string of satellite summits of all sorts that will be associated with that summit. When we get to know, in a month or two, whether we will be hosting it, we would like to involve Parliament, the provinces and, in particularly, local governments in a massive effort to ensure not only that South Africa is used as a venue, but that the mere fact of the earth summit being held here leaves a lasting impact on South Africa and on environmental questions in this country, in the region and certainly in Africa also. [Applause.]
Debate concluded.
Business suspended at 13:30 and resumed at 14:34.